Michael O'Grady - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Michael O'Grady
Meteorological Applications
Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces
Providing an intuitive and ubiquitous interface to those services aimed at the mobile computing c... more Providing an intuitive and ubiquitous interface to those services aimed at the mobile computing community continues to preoccupy both service providers and certain sections of the research community. In this short paper, we present a snapshot of a system that is under ongoing development and reflect briefly on the initial results of some user evaluations. Based on these, we identify some critical problems with the current implementation and present a design orientated towards significantly improving the end user experience and making the interface more adaptable such that it meets the expectations and requirements of the user.
2022 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2)
Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2009, 2009
Ambient Exercise refers to the implicit exercise that people undertake in the course of their eve... more Ambient Exercise refers to the implicit exercise that people undertake in the course of their everyday duties-a simple example being climbing stairs. Increasing awareness of the potential health benefits of such activities may well contribute to an increase in a person's well-being. Initially, it is necessary to monitor and quantify such exercise so that personalized fitness plans may be constructed. In this paper, the implicit interaction modality is harnessed to enable the capturing of ambient exercise activity thereby facilitating its subsequent quantification and interpretation. The novelty of the solution proposed lies in its ubiquity and transparency.
Proceedings. 15th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 2004., 2004
This paper describes two self-optimisation techniques that have been employed in the design of tw... more This paper describes two self-optimisation techniques that have been employed in the design of two exemplar agent-based mobile computing systems, namely Gullivers Genie and the Agents Channelling ContExt Sensitive Services (ACCESS) architecture. Specifically, we describe how agent cloning is used within Gullivers Genie as a basis for delivering a scalable architecture. Additionally, we describe the concept of collaborative agent tunin g, a process in which multiple agents negotiate in order to optimise their overall performance while residing on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
IEEE Access, 2021
Accurate and reliable real-time urban traffic management can benefit urban citizens' daily life b... more Accurate and reliable real-time urban traffic management can benefit urban citizens' daily life by reducing stress, travel time and carbon footprint. The provision of reliable and accurate traffic information has however proven to be a major challenge in intelligent transportation systems. Citizens carrying smartphones can be exploited as an important provider of traffic information and the mobile crowd sensing paradigm can be used as a solution to this challenge. In this paper, an urban traffic monitoring system which exploits the power of participatory sensing and cloud messaging is proposed. Crowd intelligence which is used to estimate traffic congestion levels, arrival times, while average road speed is harvested from crowd sensed data. Traffic congestion control at route level is implemented with a route guidance system. Proactive warnings or recommendations to drivers in the vicinity of, or on the route to, reported events are provided. The drivers can also report short-term traffic events and physical road conditions for road monitoring. Real-world experiments have been conducted with a prototype implementation and the results demonstrate both system feasibility and traffic estimation accuracy. INDEX TERMS Crowd intelligence, intelligent transportation system, mobile crowd sensing, real-time traffic management, traffic congestion.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2017
Heterogeneity represents a singular barrier to the cross-domain adoption of sensor networks, limi... more Heterogeneity represents a singular barrier to the cross-domain adoption of sensor networks, limiting the take-up of Ambient Intelligence. Historically, the preferred approach has been to adopt a middleware solution to mitigate the problems associated with heterogeneity. Normally, the sensor discovery process is tightly coupled to the middleware platform, resulting in a unique implementation for each platform. Such an approach is unsustainable given the speed of developments in sensing technologies and the increased deployment of networks of sensors and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. An alternative approach is to decouple the sensor discovery process from the middleware and to regard it a discrete service that could be harnessed by different middleware platforms and external IoT services. This paper presents the design and implementation of a generic discovery service framework-POrtable Discovery Services (PODS). PODS utilises existing middleware abstractions to support heterogeneity in so far as such abstractions relate to the discovery process. An evaluation of the framework is presented using an exemplar middleware platform.
Employees that engage in even moderate amounts of exercise during their working day suffer less f... more Employees that engage in even moderate amounts of exercise during their working day suffer less from stress and are more tolerant in the various irritations that accompany normal working life. Though it cannot be said with certainty that such workers are more productive, tentative evidence suggest that this may well be the case. A useful service of a smart office or work environment is to contribute to the health and well-being of those that inhabit such spaces. One practical approach to this is to monitor the exercise that employees engage in during the day, and using this as a basis, motivate them to engage in further physical activity. In this paper, issues relating to monitoring employee physical activity are explored.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003
Navigation support will form a critical component of future mobile computing systems. However, th... more Navigation support will form a critical component of future mobile computing systems. However, the ability of people to navigate in unfamiliar environments can vary substantially. In this paper, it is argued that the current generation of mobile devices and associated software does not adequately support the navigational requirements of a broad segment of users and that alternative strategies and design criteria need to be considered.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011
Enabling intuitive interaction in system design remains an art more than a science. This difficul... more Enabling intuitive interaction in system design remains an art more than a science. This difficulty is exacerbated when the diversity of device and end user group is considered. In this paper, it is argued that conventional interaction modalities are unsuitable in many circumstances and that alternative modalities need be considered. Specifically the case of implicit interaction is considered, and the paper discusses how its use may lead to more satisfactory experiences. Specifically, harnessing implicit interaction in conjunction with the traditional explicit interaction modality, can enable a more intuitive and natural interactive experience. However, the exercise of capturing and interpreting implicit interaction is problematic and is one that lends itself to the adoption of AI techniques. In this position paper, the potential of lightweight intelligent agents is proposed as a model for harmonising the explicit and implicit components of an arbitrary interaction.
2008 Ninth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies, 2008
Intelligent agents offer a viable paradigm for enabling AmI applications and services. As WSN tec... more Intelligent agents offer a viable paradigm for enabling AmI applications and services. As WSN technologies are anticipated to provide an indispensable component in many application domains, the need for enabling the agent paradigm to encompass such technologies becomes more urgent. The resource-constrained ad-hoc nature of WSNs poses significant challenges to conventional agent frameworks. In particular, the implications for agent functionality and behaviour in a WSN context demand that issues such as unreliable message delivery and limited power resources, amongst others, be considered. In this paper, the practical issues of agent migration and communication are considered in light of WSN constraints. The discussion is illustrated through a description of approaches adopted by Agent Factory Micro Edition (AFME).
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2010
International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence, 2010
Delivering multimedia services to roaming subscribers raises significant challenges for content p... more Delivering multimedia services to roaming subscribers raises significant challenges for content providers. There are a number of reasons for this; however, the principal difficulties arise from the inherent differences between the nature of mobile computing usage, and that of its static counterpart. The harnessing of appropriate contextual elements pertaining to a mobile subscriber at any given time offers significant opportunities for enhancing and customising service delivery. Dynamic content provision is a case in point. The versatile nature of the mobile subscriber offers opportunities for the delivery of content that is most appropriate to the subscriber’s prevailing context, and hence is most likely to be welcomed. To succeed in this endeavour requires an innate understanding of the technologies, the mobile usage paradigm and the application domain in question, such that conflicting demands may be reconciled to the subscriber’s benefit. In this paper, multimedia-augmented serv...
Mobile Services Industries, Technologies, and Applications in the Global Economy
Broadband deployment in the United States is expanding rapidly but unevenly. Using new FCC census... more Broadband deployment in the United States is expanding rapidly but unevenly. Using new FCC census data on wireline and wireless broadband providers, the authors of this chapter study mobile broadband provision within the United States. Although rural areas lag behind non-rural areas in the availability of residential access to both mobile and fixed broadband, mobile broadband is at least partially filling in geographical gaps in fixed-line broadband coverage. Multiple regression results indicate that population density and growth, and the fraction of blacks, Hispanics, and youth in an area are positive predictors of the number of mobile broadband providers. The fraction of Native Americans, Asians, and senior citizens in an area are negative predictors. Income is positively associated with the number of providers, with largest effects in rural areas. Finally, even after controlling for population density and income, rural areas continue to be associated with a lower number of provid...
The Computer Journal, 2009
One of the most important factors to be considered when developing an application for a wireless ... more One of the most important factors to be considered when developing an application for a wireless sensor network (WSN) is its power consumption. Intelligent power management (IPM) for a WSN is crucial in maximizing the operational longevity.An established regime for achieving this is through the opportunistic hibernation of redundant nodes. Redundancy, however, has various definitions within the field of WSNs and indeed multiple protocols, each operating using a different definition, coexist on the same node. In this paper, we advocate the use of an MAS as an appropriate mechanism by which different stake-holders, each desiring to hibernate a node in order to conserve power, can collaborate. The problem of node hibernation for the heterogeneous sensing coverage areas is introduced and the manner by which it can be solved using ADOPT, an algorithm for distributed constraint optimization, is described. We illustrate that the node hibernation strategy discussed here is more useful than the traditional stack-based approach and motivate our discussion using IPM as an exemplar.
Information Systems Frontiers, 2008
Mobile computing is undoubtedly one of the predominant computer usage paradigms in operation toda... more Mobile computing is undoubtedly one of the predominant computer usage paradigms in operation today. The implications of what might be cautiously termed a usage paradigm shift have still not crystallised fully, either for society, or those envisaging a new raft of applications and services for mobile users. However, fundamental to the current and future success of mobile computing are mobile telecommunications networks. Such networks have been a success story in their own right in recent years, both as traditional voice carriers and, increasingly importantly, as a conduit of mobile data. The potential for new mobile data applications is immense, but, crucially, this potential is severely compromised by two factors inherent in mobile computing: limited bandwidth and computationally restricted devices. Hence, the academic and commercial interest in harnessing intelligent techniques as a means of mitigating these concerns, and ensuring the user experience is a satisfactory one. In this paper, the broad area of intelligence in telecommunications networks is examined, and issues relating to the deployment of intelligent technologies are explored. In particular, the potential of intelligent agents is identified as a viable mechanism for realising a full end-to-end deployment of intelligence throughout the network, including possibly the most crucial component: the end user's device. As an illustration of the viability of this approach, a brief description of a mobile blogging application is presented.
Computer Communications, 2003
This paper introduces Gulliver's Genie a context-aware tourist guide that assists roaming tourist... more This paper introduces Gulliver's Genie a context-aware tourist guide that assists roaming tourists. The approach adopted within this system is the deployment of intelligent agents, which collectively determine the user context and retrieve and assemble multi-media presentations that are wirelessly transmitted and displayed on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). As a backdrop, we first consider the state of the art in terms of context sensitive tourist guides, telecommunications, positioning technology and agent technologies. Gulliver's Genie considers user context in terms of position, orientation and user profile. System agents are strong intentional agents that base deductions on a mental state comprising of Beliefs, Desires and Intentions (BDI). This paper presents the design of the system together with a glimpse of the user experience.
Artificial Intelligence Review, 2007
Multi-agent Systems (MAS) through their intrinsically distributed nature offer a promising softwa... more Multi-agent Systems (MAS) through their intrinsically distributed nature offer a promising software modelling and implementation framework for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. WSNs are characterised by limited resources from a computational and energy perspective; in addition, the integrity of the WSN coverage area may be compromised over the duration of the network"s operational lifetime, as environmental effects amongst others take their toll. Thus a significant problem ariseshow can an agent construct an accurate model of the prevailing situation in order that it can make effective decisions about future courses of action within these constraints? In this paper, one popular agent architecture, the BDI architecture, is examined from this perspective. In particular, the fundamental issue of belief generation within WSN constraints using classical reasoning augmented with a fuzzy component in a hybrid fashion is explored in terms of energy-awareness and utility.
Meteorological Applications
Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces
Providing an intuitive and ubiquitous interface to those services aimed at the mobile computing c... more Providing an intuitive and ubiquitous interface to those services aimed at the mobile computing community continues to preoccupy both service providers and certain sections of the research community. In this short paper, we present a snapshot of a system that is under ongoing development and reflect briefly on the initial results of some user evaluations. Based on these, we identify some critical problems with the current implementation and present a design orientated towards significantly improving the end user experience and making the interface more adaptable such that it meets the expectations and requirements of the user.
2022 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2)
Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2009, 2009
Ambient Exercise refers to the implicit exercise that people undertake in the course of their eve... more Ambient Exercise refers to the implicit exercise that people undertake in the course of their everyday duties-a simple example being climbing stairs. Increasing awareness of the potential health benefits of such activities may well contribute to an increase in a person's well-being. Initially, it is necessary to monitor and quantify such exercise so that personalized fitness plans may be constructed. In this paper, the implicit interaction modality is harnessed to enable the capturing of ambient exercise activity thereby facilitating its subsequent quantification and interpretation. The novelty of the solution proposed lies in its ubiquity and transparency.
Proceedings. 15th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 2004., 2004
This paper describes two self-optimisation techniques that have been employed in the design of tw... more This paper describes two self-optimisation techniques that have been employed in the design of two exemplar agent-based mobile computing systems, namely Gullivers Genie and the Agents Channelling ContExt Sensitive Services (ACCESS) architecture. Specifically, we describe how agent cloning is used within Gullivers Genie as a basis for delivering a scalable architecture. Additionally, we describe the concept of collaborative agent tunin g, a process in which multiple agents negotiate in order to optimise their overall performance while residing on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
IEEE Access, 2021
Accurate and reliable real-time urban traffic management can benefit urban citizens' daily life b... more Accurate and reliable real-time urban traffic management can benefit urban citizens' daily life by reducing stress, travel time and carbon footprint. The provision of reliable and accurate traffic information has however proven to be a major challenge in intelligent transportation systems. Citizens carrying smartphones can be exploited as an important provider of traffic information and the mobile crowd sensing paradigm can be used as a solution to this challenge. In this paper, an urban traffic monitoring system which exploits the power of participatory sensing and cloud messaging is proposed. Crowd intelligence which is used to estimate traffic congestion levels, arrival times, while average road speed is harvested from crowd sensed data. Traffic congestion control at route level is implemented with a route guidance system. Proactive warnings or recommendations to drivers in the vicinity of, or on the route to, reported events are provided. The drivers can also report short-term traffic events and physical road conditions for road monitoring. Real-world experiments have been conducted with a prototype implementation and the results demonstrate both system feasibility and traffic estimation accuracy. INDEX TERMS Crowd intelligence, intelligent transportation system, mobile crowd sensing, real-time traffic management, traffic congestion.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2017
Heterogeneity represents a singular barrier to the cross-domain adoption of sensor networks, limi... more Heterogeneity represents a singular barrier to the cross-domain adoption of sensor networks, limiting the take-up of Ambient Intelligence. Historically, the preferred approach has been to adopt a middleware solution to mitigate the problems associated with heterogeneity. Normally, the sensor discovery process is tightly coupled to the middleware platform, resulting in a unique implementation for each platform. Such an approach is unsustainable given the speed of developments in sensing technologies and the increased deployment of networks of sensors and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. An alternative approach is to decouple the sensor discovery process from the middleware and to regard it a discrete service that could be harnessed by different middleware platforms and external IoT services. This paper presents the design and implementation of a generic discovery service framework-POrtable Discovery Services (PODS). PODS utilises existing middleware abstractions to support heterogeneity in so far as such abstractions relate to the discovery process. An evaluation of the framework is presented using an exemplar middleware platform.
Employees that engage in even moderate amounts of exercise during their working day suffer less f... more Employees that engage in even moderate amounts of exercise during their working day suffer less from stress and are more tolerant in the various irritations that accompany normal working life. Though it cannot be said with certainty that such workers are more productive, tentative evidence suggest that this may well be the case. A useful service of a smart office or work environment is to contribute to the health and well-being of those that inhabit such spaces. One practical approach to this is to monitor the exercise that employees engage in during the day, and using this as a basis, motivate them to engage in further physical activity. In this paper, issues relating to monitoring employee physical activity are explored.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003
Navigation support will form a critical component of future mobile computing systems. However, th... more Navigation support will form a critical component of future mobile computing systems. However, the ability of people to navigate in unfamiliar environments can vary substantially. In this paper, it is argued that the current generation of mobile devices and associated software does not adequately support the navigational requirements of a broad segment of users and that alternative strategies and design criteria need to be considered.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011
Enabling intuitive interaction in system design remains an art more than a science. This difficul... more Enabling intuitive interaction in system design remains an art more than a science. This difficulty is exacerbated when the diversity of device and end user group is considered. In this paper, it is argued that conventional interaction modalities are unsuitable in many circumstances and that alternative modalities need be considered. Specifically the case of implicit interaction is considered, and the paper discusses how its use may lead to more satisfactory experiences. Specifically, harnessing implicit interaction in conjunction with the traditional explicit interaction modality, can enable a more intuitive and natural interactive experience. However, the exercise of capturing and interpreting implicit interaction is problematic and is one that lends itself to the adoption of AI techniques. In this position paper, the potential of lightweight intelligent agents is proposed as a model for harmonising the explicit and implicit components of an arbitrary interaction.
2008 Ninth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies, 2008
Intelligent agents offer a viable paradigm for enabling AmI applications and services. As WSN tec... more Intelligent agents offer a viable paradigm for enabling AmI applications and services. As WSN technologies are anticipated to provide an indispensable component in many application domains, the need for enabling the agent paradigm to encompass such technologies becomes more urgent. The resource-constrained ad-hoc nature of WSNs poses significant challenges to conventional agent frameworks. In particular, the implications for agent functionality and behaviour in a WSN context demand that issues such as unreliable message delivery and limited power resources, amongst others, be considered. In this paper, the practical issues of agent migration and communication are considered in light of WSN constraints. The discussion is illustrated through a description of approaches adopted by Agent Factory Micro Edition (AFME).
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2010
International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence, 2010
Delivering multimedia services to roaming subscribers raises significant challenges for content p... more Delivering multimedia services to roaming subscribers raises significant challenges for content providers. There are a number of reasons for this; however, the principal difficulties arise from the inherent differences between the nature of mobile computing usage, and that of its static counterpart. The harnessing of appropriate contextual elements pertaining to a mobile subscriber at any given time offers significant opportunities for enhancing and customising service delivery. Dynamic content provision is a case in point. The versatile nature of the mobile subscriber offers opportunities for the delivery of content that is most appropriate to the subscriber’s prevailing context, and hence is most likely to be welcomed. To succeed in this endeavour requires an innate understanding of the technologies, the mobile usage paradigm and the application domain in question, such that conflicting demands may be reconciled to the subscriber’s benefit. In this paper, multimedia-augmented serv...
Mobile Services Industries, Technologies, and Applications in the Global Economy
Broadband deployment in the United States is expanding rapidly but unevenly. Using new FCC census... more Broadband deployment in the United States is expanding rapidly but unevenly. Using new FCC census data on wireline and wireless broadband providers, the authors of this chapter study mobile broadband provision within the United States. Although rural areas lag behind non-rural areas in the availability of residential access to both mobile and fixed broadband, mobile broadband is at least partially filling in geographical gaps in fixed-line broadband coverage. Multiple regression results indicate that population density and growth, and the fraction of blacks, Hispanics, and youth in an area are positive predictors of the number of mobile broadband providers. The fraction of Native Americans, Asians, and senior citizens in an area are negative predictors. Income is positively associated with the number of providers, with largest effects in rural areas. Finally, even after controlling for population density and income, rural areas continue to be associated with a lower number of provid...
The Computer Journal, 2009
One of the most important factors to be considered when developing an application for a wireless ... more One of the most important factors to be considered when developing an application for a wireless sensor network (WSN) is its power consumption. Intelligent power management (IPM) for a WSN is crucial in maximizing the operational longevity.An established regime for achieving this is through the opportunistic hibernation of redundant nodes. Redundancy, however, has various definitions within the field of WSNs and indeed multiple protocols, each operating using a different definition, coexist on the same node. In this paper, we advocate the use of an MAS as an appropriate mechanism by which different stake-holders, each desiring to hibernate a node in order to conserve power, can collaborate. The problem of node hibernation for the heterogeneous sensing coverage areas is introduced and the manner by which it can be solved using ADOPT, an algorithm for distributed constraint optimization, is described. We illustrate that the node hibernation strategy discussed here is more useful than the traditional stack-based approach and motivate our discussion using IPM as an exemplar.
Information Systems Frontiers, 2008
Mobile computing is undoubtedly one of the predominant computer usage paradigms in operation toda... more Mobile computing is undoubtedly one of the predominant computer usage paradigms in operation today. The implications of what might be cautiously termed a usage paradigm shift have still not crystallised fully, either for society, or those envisaging a new raft of applications and services for mobile users. However, fundamental to the current and future success of mobile computing are mobile telecommunications networks. Such networks have been a success story in their own right in recent years, both as traditional voice carriers and, increasingly importantly, as a conduit of mobile data. The potential for new mobile data applications is immense, but, crucially, this potential is severely compromised by two factors inherent in mobile computing: limited bandwidth and computationally restricted devices. Hence, the academic and commercial interest in harnessing intelligent techniques as a means of mitigating these concerns, and ensuring the user experience is a satisfactory one. In this paper, the broad area of intelligence in telecommunications networks is examined, and issues relating to the deployment of intelligent technologies are explored. In particular, the potential of intelligent agents is identified as a viable mechanism for realising a full end-to-end deployment of intelligence throughout the network, including possibly the most crucial component: the end user's device. As an illustration of the viability of this approach, a brief description of a mobile blogging application is presented.
Computer Communications, 2003
This paper introduces Gulliver's Genie a context-aware tourist guide that assists roaming tourist... more This paper introduces Gulliver's Genie a context-aware tourist guide that assists roaming tourists. The approach adopted within this system is the deployment of intelligent agents, which collectively determine the user context and retrieve and assemble multi-media presentations that are wirelessly transmitted and displayed on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). As a backdrop, we first consider the state of the art in terms of context sensitive tourist guides, telecommunications, positioning technology and agent technologies. Gulliver's Genie considers user context in terms of position, orientation and user profile. System agents are strong intentional agents that base deductions on a mental state comprising of Beliefs, Desires and Intentions (BDI). This paper presents the design of the system together with a glimpse of the user experience.
Artificial Intelligence Review, 2007
Multi-agent Systems (MAS) through their intrinsically distributed nature offer a promising softwa... more Multi-agent Systems (MAS) through their intrinsically distributed nature offer a promising software modelling and implementation framework for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. WSNs are characterised by limited resources from a computational and energy perspective; in addition, the integrity of the WSN coverage area may be compromised over the duration of the network"s operational lifetime, as environmental effects amongst others take their toll. Thus a significant problem ariseshow can an agent construct an accurate model of the prevailing situation in order that it can make effective decisions about future courses of action within these constraints? In this paper, one popular agent architecture, the BDI architecture, is examined from this perspective. In particular, the fundamental issue of belief generation within WSN constraints using classical reasoning augmented with a fuzzy component in a hybrid fashion is explored in terms of energy-awareness and utility.